Honour killings 'linked to terrorism'

The CPS said an Islamist terror group was behind another murder, as well as a case where a woman was threatened and is in hiding, according to a BBC investigation.

The CPS's national leader on honour crime, Nazir Afzal, told Radio 4's File on 4 programme the threats to kill a woman known as Miss B, who is now in hiding, came from her family but originated in an Egyptian terrorist group.

"They told her husband that if he didn't put his wife in her place then they would do it themselves."

Mr Afzal also said Heshu Yones, who was stabbed to death by her father, Abdalla Yones, had links with a Kurdish nationalist organisation: "You have a second generation youth who have an exaggerated concept of what home is like."

"They get their identity and their ethnicity from these traditions", he said.

"We know they are bizarre and outdated but they get their identity from those traditions and they feel very strongly that how you treat your women is a demonstration of your commitment to radicalism and extremist thought."

Official police figures show 19 confirmed "honour killings" in the last decade, but the British courts are dealing with a further eight cases.

In the most recent case of honour violence, Banaz Mahmod, 20, was strangled with a bootlace on the orders of her father and uncle, both Iraqi Kurds who believed she had disgraced their family.

In 2005, Samaira Nazir, 25, was stabbed 18 times in a frenzied attack in front of her two young nieces. She had fallen in love with an Afghan asylum seeker and had rejected suitors her family had proposed.

There is no evidence to suggest that these cases are terror related.

The United Nations estimate there are 5,000 honour killings worldwide every year.